Grading Texas

The Wall Street Journal lies; attacks teachers and workers

Ever since its purchase by a right-wing mega-millionaire with a history of being challenged by basic journalistic ethics, the Wall Street Journal has sometimes refused to let facts interfere with an editorial policy strongly tilted against the working class, the backbone of America, and it has done so again.

This time, school teachers and other public employees in Texas are in the crosshairs of a WSJ editorial that ran over the weekend, deliberately lying to the public about a bill that would end for most public employees in Texas the long-time practice of having their union or professional association dues automatically deducted from their paychecks.

In its opening paragraph, the editorial implies the automatic deduction system is a “corrupt bargain between government and politicians,” when, in truth, it is nothing of the kind. It simply is a voluntary, convenient and secure way for teachers and other government workers to handle their membership dues. For example, it provides more security against identify theft than an automatic funds transfer from a bank account.

In the vast majority of cases, the act of withholding membership dues doesn’t cost the government anything, and, if it does, existing law already provides a way for organizations to reimburse taxpayers. Consequently, no governing board, to my knowledge, has asked for the practice to be banned. In fact, the superintendent of Houston ISD, the state’s largest school district, has been among many individuals and groups speaking out against the proposed change.

The Senate last week, nevertheless, approved Senate Bill 1968, which would ban automatic dues deductions for most public employees but only for selected organizations. Now, the Wall Street Journal is trying to put pressure on Speaker Joe Straus and the House, where similar legislation, so far, has gone nowhere.

Police officers, firefighters and emergency medical personnel are exempted from the bill. So they could continue to enjoy the convenience of automatic dues deductions while school and other municipal employees could not. Various charitable organizations, including some tax-exempt groups that actively engage in politics, could also continue to have their dues automatically deducted.

Unions are the primary target of this legislation, which not only is unfair but also ludicrous in Texas, which has been a right-to-work state since 1947 and will remain one for a long time to come.

Here are a couple of other big lies from backers of the legislation.

CLAIM: Union membership dues are primarily used to finance political activity.

FACT: In truth, membership dues are given voluntarily and may not be used for political activities or campaign contributions. They are completely separate from the voluntarily contributions some union members make to a political action committee for political activities. And, some of the charitable organizations that would be untouched by the bill are heavily involved in right-wing, anti-consumer, anti-worker politics.

CLAIM: Unions work to elect only Democrats to public office.

FACT: In truth, the Texas State Teachers Association’s political action committee is bipartisan. It supports both Democrats and Republicans in state races and nonpartisan candidates in local school board elections. The TSTA PAC doesn’t evaluate candidates on their partisan affiliation, only on their commitment to public schools and students. And the PAC is supported by voluntary contributions from TSTA members, which are separate and in addition to membership dues.

CLAIM: Unions “automatically dun workers for political causes those workers don’t support.”

FACT: In Texas, a right-to-work state, no one is “automatically dunned” or coerced by a union. Paying dues to an organization is completely voluntary.

The Wall Street Journal article is aimed at Texas, but the world it describes has precious little to do with the Lone Star State. It has everything to do, though, with the efforts of self-styled “free market” advocates to disrespect workers, including the people who teach their children, get them to school and back safely every day and ensure a safe and healthy learning environment.

What is at play here is a scorched-earth effort by the privileged one-percenters and others of their ilk to destroy the basic employment rights of workers in Texas and the United States, a selfish, greedy and short-sighted attitude that threatens to undermine the very social fabric holding our country together.

When a fairy tale becomes a nightmare for education

The governor and the legislative majority cut taxes, promising that everyone would prosper and live happily ever after. And, they were considered heroes in the eyes of constituents who believe the best government is the least possible government. Sound familiar?

What I just described actually happened in Kansas three years ago, and, despite the fairy tale promises, the experience didn’t have a happy ending, especially for educators and their students. Nevertheless, a similar scenario is developing now in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott and other leaders also are demanding tax cuts. Sooner or later, the House and Senate majorities will end their political dueling and agree on a tax reduction package that will reduce available state revenue by $4 billion to $5 billion in the upcoming two-year budget cycle. In the future, the loss of state revenue could total billions more, making it difficult to provide essential services, such as quality education, to a growing population.

And, if any Texas leaders know how the Kansas tax-cutting experience played out, they are ignoring it.

In 2012, Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and a Republican-dominated Legislature enacted sweeping tax cuts, allegedly to spur economic growth and increase prosperity. But they didn’t know what they were talking about – or didn’t care. Now, three years later, Kansas is in the middle of a budgetary nightmare.

With post-cut tax receipts repeatedly coming in lower than expectations, Kansas is facing a $422 million revenue shortfall for the fiscal year beginning July 1, according to the Washington Post column linked below.

Public schools haven’t taken the only budgetary hits because there has been more than enough misery to spread around among a host of important services. But state government in Kansas, as in Texas, has a history – and a court decision to prove it – of under-funding its public schools. And, the tax cuts worsened the problem.

Consequently, Kansas schools have been forced to cut back on a number of important programs, and at least eight districts are ending the school year early because they have run out of money. At least one district is shutting down two weeks early, and the budgetary misery likely will continue next school year.

As columnist Catherine Rampell wrote, educators “must continue to find new and innovative ways to do less with less.”

That won’t happen in Texas, you say? A few years ago, Gov. Brownback and his allies said it wouldn’t happen in Kansas either. The truth is no one knows what the long-term effect of tax cuts in Texas will be. We have a strong economy, but it is showing signs of cooling, partly because of weaker oil prices and cuts in energy production. And, remember, many Texas school districts are still recovering from $5.4 billion in education cuts imposed by the legislative majority four years ago.

Elections have consequences. In Kansas and soon in Texas, those consequences include tax cuts.

Tax cuts can have consequences too, and not necessarily what tax-cutters may promise or expect.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kansas-schools-have-to-do-less-with-less/2015/04/30/6cd6ca70-ef74-11e4-a55f-38924fca94f9_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

Vouchers: a dirty word and a bad idea

The pro-voucher crowd is still trying to deny that Senate Bill 4, the voucher bill approved by the Senate, is a voucher bill. At least one voucher advocate, Jeff Patterson, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference, has been making the rounds of legislators and reporters, apparently trying to dupe them into thinking the tax-credit scholarships that would be created by the bill are not vouchers.

According to the Texas Tribune, Patterson is claiming that TSTA and other voucher opponents are misusing the term, voucher, as a “dirty word.”

Well, folks, a private school voucher is a “dirty word” as well as a bad idea, and the term is correctly applied to the tax credits proposed by Senate Bill 4. Those tax credits would be designed to encourage businesses to donate money for scholarships for private school tuition by reducing the state franchise taxes that the businesses otherwise would have to pay. So, private schools would receive funding that otherwise would have gone into the state treasury for public schools and other public needs.

That clearly makes Senate Bill 4 a voucher bill.

Click on the link below to see a video explaining the subterfuge and the “ouch” in vouchers. It is by Raise Your Hand Texas, a public schools advocate and TSTA ally in the anti-voucher fight.

http://www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/legislative-agenda/join-raise-your-hand-texas-to-prevent-vouchers-from-defunding-and-dismantling-public-schools/

The gift of free public schools for all comers

I long have thought the pledge of allegiance to the Texas flag is technically wrong. I mean that part about our state being “indivisible.” The congressional resolution under which Texas was admitted to the Union in 1845 provides that Texas, if it chooses, can divide itself into as many as five states, although that never will happen.

Shanna Peeples – a high school English teacher and TSTA member from Amarillo who also is the new National Teacher of the Year – has a different take on what the word “indivisible” means in the pledge, at least what it means for our public schools. And, I like her interpretation.

In a speech to TSTA’s House of Delegates meeting a few weeks ago in Frisco, Shanna said, “We don’t separate people into groups that are more deserving than others.”

That means Texas’ public schools, as required by the state constitution, offer free educations to all children, regardless of income, ability, race, native language or citizenship. As we often say at TSTA, we don’t have standardized kids in our classrooms.

But we do have thousands of dedicated teachers and other school employees who are making a difference in children’s lives every day, despite under-funding, counterproductive privatization experiments and other obstacles erected by some policymakers in Washington and Austin who have long since forgotten what the inside of a classroom looks like and are sadly out of touch with students’ needs.

Shanna Peeples is one of those dedicated professionals and will be recognized by President Obama in a ceremony at the White House tomorrow.

Shanna teaches at Palo Duro High School, where the vast majority of students live in poverty and many are immigrants from such diverse countries as Iraq, Cuba, Burma, Somalia and Ethiopia. Many have suffered trauma from wars in their home countries.

While some legislators in Austin have been denying the reality of a more-diverse Texas future by trying to erect more barriers to these children, Shanna and thousands of other Texas educators have been working to enhance that future by making a positive difference in all of their students’ lives –from whatever background or ability level.

Our public school system is “our culture’s greatest gift to the world,” Shanna told her TSTA colleagues, all of whom are working to keep it that way.

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